Forum:New look 2010
New Wikia Layout This forum page should list all the recent changes Wikia has imposed on wikis. Unlike other forum pages, I don't think it's necessary for everyone to sign their points. When we have several responses, I will send them to Wikia. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 21:32, September 15, 2010 (UTC) *Templates moved to the left side of the page, causing havoc as pages were usually designed with templates on the right side. (A big deal with images, which may need to be moved from one side to the other.) *The wiki was designed to have light text on a dark skin; now it's the opposite (again). *Edit talk pages is hard to find. (Can anyone find it? I can't seem to. I know it's possible to add a new section easily, but responding is getting difficult.) *Currently under the feedback form, holding a mouse over certain links causes a huge white window to "fall down" and fill up much of the screen. *Convenient buttons (such as create new page and recent changes) missing from left panel. I haven't noticed a problem with most of the listed issues, though the image one definatly is an issue, both in this wiki and every other wiki I've visited in recent times. I don't fully understand the template/coding change, but it's the change that irks me the most.--Hawki 22:02, September 15, 2010 (UTC) This is if you use Wikia's new beta skin and leave "Let the admins override my skin choice" unchecked on the , correct? This wiki looks so messed up if I try the new skin, I have to leave the "Let the admins override my skin choice" box checked for anything to look the way it is supposed to. Wikia has done some mockups of how they would get various wikis to look on one of their staff blogs. The new skin is supposed to be customizable but I don't really know anything about how you would do that. We already have the current Monaco skin very well customized, and hopefully the new skin won't be that hard to customize to maintain the basic color scheme and functionality, and hopefully won't have any bugs when it is out of beta and implemented all over Wikia. Apparently the only Wikia wiki that won't use the new skin is Uncyclopedia, which still uses Monobook as its skin and will get to keep Monobook. But Monaco is going to be discarded in favor of the new skin, everywhere else. --The Overmind 23:22, September 15, 2010 (UTC) I set it back to the old skin *phew* and set it so I'm overriding things. Although maybe the latter just made things worse. Tell me if you're seeing the old skin or the new one. If you're seeing the new one still, I might have to drop the override. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 23:26, September 15, 2010 (UTC) Right now I'm seeing the old skin, and I have "Let the admins override my skin choice" enabled. --The Overmind 23:48, September 15, 2010 (UTC) The skin changed for me again (to a bad one). Has wikia ended the beta and imposed the changes? I'm going to ask JoePlay et al. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 22:18, September 22, 2010 (UTC) Upcoming Changes :Taken from Bleach wiki, but it applies to all: In case anyone is unaware, Wikia is overhauling its look later this year and it will be a big overhaul that will affect both the appearance and how things are done here. The change is compulsory for all wikis because it is not simply a new skin option, it’s going to be an upgraded version of Wikia (the wikia system's software is going from mediawiki 1.15 to 1.16, which is apparently a bigger deal than it sounds like). Wikia does not want to waste resources working on an outdated version of the software, hence the update being mandatory. This is what I have been able to piece together from what I've seen on Wikia Central. Check out "Experience the new Wikia" for a look at some wikis using the new look, FAQ and the Transition guide. Discontinued features *'The widget dashboard and all widgets are to be discontinued' as they were deemed to be underused. *'"Report a Problem" links will also be discontinued' with the new skin as they were not used as intended. *'"Email a user" link is gone.' *Page ratings are gone. New features *New, customizable toolbar that is anchored at bottom of screen (Watch the demo video to see how it works.) You will need to learn to use this. *New tool for customizing the color scheme/theme, including default themes. Other changes *Wiki logo is replaced with "Wordmark", which admins can customized by adjusting the text & color, or by uploading an image in the theme designer. *'Site notice is no longer on every page.' It is now located in the Community Corner and users will receive a notification bubble each time it is updated. *The wiki navigation that is now on the left sidebar, is moving to the top of the screen. It will have 4 drop down menus, with 7 links each. This is substantially less than we currently have. *My Home becomes Wiki Activity and contains a link to recent changes *There is a new sidebar area on the right, where the recent activity and other "modules" will sit. More "modules" are being developed for it, but there are currently no plans for user-developed modules. However, Wikia have stated that they are looking at putting infoboxes and other page content into modules in the sidebar. *Moved the most recent editor’s name from the bottom of the page to the top, added an avatar, and a new mini-history dropdown menu, which contains the link to the full history. (Supposed to make it more obvious to new users that anyone can edit a wiki.) *Two of the categories are listed at top as well the full list at the bottom. Apparently the two chosen will be the categories containing the most pages. There is a blacklist to keep out typical maintenance categories, but it is not wiki specific (atm). *Edit and talk buttons will be used instead of written links. *The name of the user who uploaded a picture will be listed underneath the image caption on articles. Other Changes *Wikia is changing to a fixed width. *The Transition Guide contains details about My Tools and customizing a skin. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 11:11, October 4, 2010 (UTC) Timing More info on the new skin: October 6th (and probably now): "Logged-out" users will see the new skin automatically on any wiki that is testing this. That means here. October 20th: The new look becomes default. Users can still switch to see the old skin. November 3rd: The option to use Monaco will be removed. What does that mean for the custom skin? "We know you’ve put a lot of work into making your wikis look great in Monaco, so we’ve worked on our end to minimize the amount of effort needed for you to move to the new look. Still, there are some things you’ll want to do in order for your wiki to look its best in the new skin. We strongly encourage you to use our Wiki Transition Guide to make this process as smooth and seamless as possible." "our new theme designer tool will be available to all beta testers, and will be released to everyone during the first stage of sitewide roll-out on October 6th. This gives you time to experiment with different themes and chat with your community about what looks best before all visitors see your wiki in the new look." When that happens, I will ask JoePlay for help. The new skin will have the ability to have a dark skin. I don't know what else can be done. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 00:59, September 30, 2010 (UTC) Getting Started First order of business: until there's an admin version of the theme tool, immediately use Special:ThemeDesigner and switch to a saner default theme. I am using a customized "Carbon" theme; set "color" to black and that should do it. I have taken the liberty of revamping the drop downs at the top. I am sure we will all find the 'tools' category useful, at least for the interim. Expand your user-specific "My Tools" popup (bottom right corner) to include the tools if you need to; you'll be going there anyway since (for some strange reason) "history" and "what links here" are there. - Meco (talk, ) 17:50, October 6, 2010 (UTC) A Strange Idea Site Notice is being removed, but I thought about that "useless" template of ours: TransTopBar. We could spread that to every page, and anytime we needed a sitenotice, put that into the template. (In short, make it useful, allowing us to add a Site Notice any time we need to.) And we could replace it with the empty TransTopBar when we don't need it. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 00:02, October 17, 2010 (UTC) Could be worth a try, but I somehow doubt it'll work-the site notice is in a realm of its own effectively, while the top bar is within the article's editing space. In the end, I think we can survive without a site notice. The news section on the front page could also cover it to an extent.--Hawki 03:59, October 17, 2010 (UTC) Perhaps a new section on the front page might be appropriate? Organizationally, I'd like to keep the news section for external events ("Blizzard said this"). I suspect Wikia intended the "Community Corner" section to supplant the Site Notice, although given how out-of-the-way the CC is I can't imagine how that would work. - Meco (talk, ) 04:34, October 17, 2010 (UTC) Perhaps we could just copy the Community Corner to the front page to, via template. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 13:21, October 17, 2010 (UTC) It's On Well, the new skin is on by default. I find that if I switch back to the old skin, it only stays for a few page views and then goes to the new skin again. For the moment, I've "nerfed" the sidebar, just to see how the wiki looks with a much smaller one. I'm going to try to replace it with something compatible with Oasis/Wikia. On another note, the pages don't appear to have fixed width in the new skin yet. So I don't know how much change we need to make, but I think every battlebox and unitbox-bearing page will likely need changes soon. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 22:14, October 20, 2010 (UTC) I restored the Monaco sidebar. Turns out there's a new Oasis sidebar, MediaWiki:Wiki-navigation that needed nerfing instead. Alas, nerfing it didn't seem to change much. There's still a HUGE blot of empty space at the top of the page before you can see content. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 22:55, October 20, 2010 (UTC) We can't nerf MediaWiki:Wiki-navigation. That removes the horizontal menu beside the wiki logo. Not sure how it looks like in Monaco; I haven't been using it since the new layout became an option (figured I may as well get use to it.) - Meco (talk, ) 23:15, October 20, 2010 (UTC) I... don't really understand what that means, but I'll check the new look again. BTW could we add back the link to the main page then, as there's none in the new look. (I click on that upper left box all the time when editing; it's too useful to get rid of.) PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 23:18, October 20, 2010 (UTC) We also need to seriously think about getting portals up. That menu only allows four top level items with just seven children each; so no more than 32 items maximum. - Meco (talk, ) 23:24, October 20, 2010 (UTC) Now that I got this to work, I see what you mean. The lore section is too big; it has to have eight entries to make sense, and it can only have ... seven. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 00:15, October 22, 2010 (UTC) Problem: Fixed It actually looks worse now with a bigger navbar :( I even have an image file of the huge blot of empty space at the top of the page that I could upload, but it's 150+ KB and I don't know how to categorize it. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 23:25, October 20, 2010 (UTC) Put it in the Category:StarCraft_Wiki_images. - Meco (talk, ) 23:26, October 20, 2010 (UTC) I don't know why, but I'm not seeing the infamous 28 menu at all. It turns out (according to the staff blog) the new layout isn't really up yet on most wikis. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 23:27, October 20, 2010 (UTC) For comparison, this is how it looks for me. - Meco (talk, ) 23:32, October 20, 2010 (UTC) For me, only the main page looks that ugly. Could you link a screenshot of that? PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 23:34, October 20, 2010 (UTC) It seemed to hate the file name or something. Here's the new one. . PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 23:40, October 20, 2010 (UTC) Main page for me. - Meco (talk, ) 23:42, October 20, 2010 (UTC) It looks much better in Internet Explorer, but there's no sidebar. At all. And it's much slower. (Plus I hate editing in IE.) *Sigh* PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 23:46, October 20, 2010 (UTC) Very strange. The only thing I can think of right now is to clear the browser cache and see if a total refresh does the trick. If not, then it's almost as if some of the CSS isn't being loaded. - Meco (talk, ) 23:57, October 20, 2010 (UTC) Clearing the cache did as much as wearing goggles ... nothing. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 11:08, October 21, 2010 (UTC) It's fixed now. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 00:15, October 22, 2010 (UTC) Fixing a New Problem: Variable Width Templates Please check archon (StarCraft II), specifically the production section. You'll notice the vast tract of empty space due to the templates being ever so slightly too wide for the new skin. Is there a way to alter the templates to be slightly narrower when necessary? PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 12:31, October 31, 2010 (UTC) Ads Placement among other things The location of the ads on main pages right below the search bar is a really bad place, because the drop down menu tends to go under the ads. Fixed width was also a really annoying idea, while I don't have a widescreen monitor, I do have them at school, and it looks terrible. This kind of thing is the reason why they should have waited before they implement this rubbish. Zeta1127 of the 89th Legion (talk) 05:24, January 4, 2011 (UTC) They could have taken a leaf from Blizzard and not released a product until it's ready. Most of the issues that I found troubling are dealt with now though. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) ) 00:47, January 5, 2011 (UTC) Indeed, definitely frustrating. Zeta1127 of the 89th Legion (talk) 04:03, January 5, 2011 (UTC)